Sketch: MSP backs Justice for Jamie Hepburn as Humza Yousaf exits

“Won’t somebody think of Jamie Hepburn? Please, somebody, just think of poor Jamie Hepburn,” Willie Rennie shouts across the chamber.

The former leader of the Scottish Lib Dems has suddenly become very concerned about the minister for independence’s welfare. And it is for this reason he is voting to bring down the Scottish Government.

Speaking in the no-confidence debate, Rennie paints a harrowing picture. Hepburn, he says, has been “toiling away” writing papers that “no one reads”.

The SNP keep him locked in a dark cupboard in the basement of St Andrews House, no windows, no haggis, no comfort breaks – just a candle to see by, gruel and water twice a day, and a bucket.

It must be “torture”, Rennie decries, and he must be “released”.

Temporarily released from his dungeon … Hepburn will be back in his cage shortly

“I’m a big fan of Jamie Hepburn,” he insists. Hepburn spins round in his seat, looking unconvinced. Perhaps thinking that if Rennie really did care, he would have come to the rescue long before now.

Temporarily released from his dungeon to ensure the government has the numbers to see off this attempt to get rid of it, Hepburn will be back in his cage shortly. But the SNP couldn’t take any chances – not after the one Humza Yousaf took the week before, to scrap the Bute House Agreement, went so wrong. Even Michael Matheson has been brought out of hiding.

Theoretically the SNP will defeat this motion of no confidence comfortably, because they have the support of the Greens. But those Greens are tricksy. They relied on them not to be apoplectic about being booted out of government and look where that got them – nearly leaderless and struggling to find anyone who actually wants the job.

Presumably this is why SNP MSP-handler George Adam has been placed next to the Green group. He’s got to make sure they definitely all hit their ‘no’ buttons. Can’t have any rogue votes.

Patrick Harvie may literally have just said his party will vote against the motion and with the SNP, but then again, the SNP has been unable to predict the behaviour of its former partners. Even when it is clear to literally everyone else in Scotland what the Greens will do.

Harvie, for his part, says he feels no “hostility or ill-will” towards Humza Yousaf. Well, why would he? Harvie was ultimately the one that came out on top. But he doesn’t “celebrate” how Yousaf’s leadership has ended, he insists. It just couldn’t be any other way, he adds sadly.

A cheerful Douglas Ross is proud as punch. Never has he done anything quite so successfully

Moving on to the substance of the debate, the Green man accuses the other opposition parties of being “performative and petty”. And that the motion before them “betrays the real motive” of the Labour party… To force an election? That’s not a secret.

Wait, no, Harvie is just concerned that passing a no-confidence motion now would mean an election right before the summer holidays. And above all else, he wants to protect the holibobs. He must be off somewhere nice – perhaps a cycling tour of Europe, now he’s got plenty of time on his hands.

Wannabe statesman Anas Sarwar insists an election is absolutely, 100 per cent necessary because the SNP “are so chaotic, divided and dysfunctional that they can’t deliver competent government”.

He also explains the situation is different in Wales, where a new first minister has just been installed without a Senedd election, not because that’s a Labour guy, but because there is no “controversy or chaos” in Wales. Hmmm.

A cheerful Douglas Ross is proud as punch. Never has he done anything quite so successfully. Labour’s problem, he gleefully tells the opposite frontbench, is that the party won’t get enough votes for this motion to pass. He will still magnanimously back it, he says, but being a “strong opposition” means being able to overthrow a first minister.

He notes a new seating arrangement in the SNP, with both Forbes and Swinney “creeping forward” towards the frontbench. It’s telling, Ross continues with a huge smile on his face, that no current cabinet secretary wants the job. They would much rather have “Honest John” to take the poison chalice.

The use of that moniker earns him a telling off from the presiding officer, so he corrects himself to “not-so-Honest John”. An even sterner telling off is forthcoming, and so Ross relents and apologises, smirking all the while. This is grown up politics, after all.

Yousaf, naturally, has to defend the government he no long wants to lead. And so, in a poor man’s version of Trainspotting, he provides a lecture on choices. “We choose” the NHS, “we choose” education, “we choose” a net zero economy. “And so much more,” he adds, having rapidly run out of things to say he’s proud of.

And with his final breath, he continues to insist that instead of a no-confidence vote in his government, there should be a vote of no confidence “in this failing, miserable union”. Ooft.